Project ROWDY 28
January 2023 – Month 8
Brick banked over the Jackfish River, boots cutting contrails no one on the frozen ground would hear until the sonic tails had already drifted into ragged clouds. Canada faded behind them, the Alberta villain already cuffed and en route to a snow-white GDA holding cell that smelled like antifreeze.
Clean clipboard victory. On to the next box.
He tapped the GDA comm on his ear; the unit vibrating as it expanded over his face in the form of a pair of red lenses. Butch called it a scouter and Brick didn’t have the heart to tell him that he was wrong. I’ll let him have this one.
He kept the HUD zoomed at fifty-percent so the world framed neat in front of and below him.
Behind him the contrails of his brothers broke apart in the slipstream, blue and green lines that never stayed parallel for a second longer than they needed to when they weren’t doing any focused flying. Boomer corkscrewed through his own vapor trail, spinning like a bottle rocket while Butch flew straight but slower than he should, mind clearly on something else.
Before Brick could ask Butch what he was thinking about so hard, Boomer’s voice pinged the comm. “Hey, hey, so what are we doin’ for lunch? I’m thinkin’ Slurpees.” Before anyone else could answer back, Boomer barrelled on. “Slurpees cus, I’m gettin’ finger-ice, that means Mach five, right? No, wait, maybe that’s Mach ten, it’s Mach fifty if y-
Not a full half-minute after he activated his “scouter” and Boomer started yapping like a chihuahua on a sugar high, the thing beeped as text rolled across the HUD. Vault, First National Bank, Manhattan, 42nd and Broadway, active armor, thirty-one hostages, two minutes since breach.
The leader of Trinity let out a low sigh. Not this idiot again.
He toggled squad audio, voice as flat as Donald’s for a single sentence. “Vault’s back, First National.”
Boomer, over the open channel and upside-down in the slipstream because what the hell else would he be doing: “Seriously? We just kicked his ass again like last month. Old man really wants the high score.”
Butch groaned somewhere to Brick’s two-o’clock. “Agaiiiiiin? Guy needs a hobby.”
“Robbing banks is the hobby.” Boomer’s voice pitched higher; air pressure made him all sorts of nasal, which was weird considering they didn’t need to breathe. “Some people collect stamps, he collects cash bags and bruises.”
Brick pulled the HUD timer into corner view. Distance seven-hundred-and-eighty-seven miles, close to twenty seconds if they sliced up to Mach 150 and accepted minor shattered windows near the landing spot.
“ETA thirty seconds. NYPD already in perimeter.” He forced a steady cadence, not clipped, not dragging, as professional as any agent the GDA had. There was a reason he considered himself the best at anything he did. “Vault upgraded armor since Boston. Sensor pods on shoulders. Extra missile wells.” Still a tin can, though.
“That tin can is still a tin can,” Butch said, the thought landing exactly where Brick’s internal line had just been, which left a faint pulse behind his temple. Sibling bleed acknowledged. Another problem he had to address, especially since he’d started getting some bleed from Boomer’s dreams the more they worked together.
With Butch, though, they seemed to share more negative thoughts. Maybe it’s just because we’re triplets. And maybe Chemical X was just the name of a dark-looking liquid.
Boomer drifted closer, voice pitched at conversation range though they had comms because Boomer needed to be heard, not just listened to. “You think Vault reads the after-action stuff we file? Like, sits there with highlighters? Maybe he’s got a little notebook, Things the Red One Does: punchy punch, fire breath, hates when his brothers talk.”
Brick let the dig pass without even rolling his eyes at it. “Probably,” he answered back as calmly as ever, voice a perfect metronome. “The guy’s predictable, not stupid. You can’t be stupid when you build and retrofit an exosuit like that.” Vault’s suit was advanced and almost bleeding edge around the time when he built it, aka the very late twentieth century, but not so much past 2005. Weak joints armored but unchanged. He adds modules but never shields the couplings quite right either.
“Oh, come on, who you fooling, Big B?” Butch added with a low groan, clearly bored of this lecture. “Paint’s still nineties radio-shack red.”
“Retrofitted,” Brick repeated, because precision stopped fights.
He cut altitude as the downdraft slapped billboards. Boomer whooped and Butch dove beside him, sonic cracks in his wake as he forced his way through the air.
Below, the Hudson glistened gunmetal under late-afternoon light, the whole city a grid of cold steel and hotter possibilities. Police strobes flashed like insect eyes at the base of almost every reflective tower south of Times Square. All the while, ambulances circled Broadway and one news chopper already orbited too low, tail rotor flicking exhaust across rooftops.
Almost too close. He realized. Pilot’s an idiot looking for ratings. That much was obvious, Vault was quick to target anything airborne, missiles almost always at the ready.
Sirens bled into comm static but Brick didn’t waste time in cutting the volume as he processed the frequencies anyway. Human voices cluttered the band; all evacuation orders, requests for supers by unit call signs he recognized but knew were a good five minutes out. They would arrive late, steamrolled by traffic and protocols.
This was gonna have to be them.
This world’s Justice League barely managed to qualify as one before they ended up all dead, and Omni-Man couldn’t be everywhere at once. The less said about Invincible the better. Guy still flinches when he takes a hit, honestly…
Wind knifed down concrete corridors as they dove. Brick smelled hot brakes and distant pretzel carts. He braced to absorb the landing shock, and bled speed, but it didn’t really do much as his boots kissed and spider cracks laced the asphalt anyway, faint but visible from his landing. He stepped forward as both his brothers slammed down at his flanks with much less care for the street below, a sound like amplified air cannons following them.
The baby of the three bounced on his toes, blue bolts already tensed to send flying. “Who’s ready for a bad boy beatdown?”
Butch cracked his knuckles, one by one, each pop nearly a gunshot that sent civilians jumping and heads turning. “Let’s just hit something.”
The bank’s front was a mess, the whole place looking like a living earthquake had already run through it.
Which couldn’t be true because Doc Seismic was reported dead.
Either way, the whole building was half-wrecked, cracks in the main columns taller and wider than a person while smoke seeped from shattered decorative lions and melted windows glowed with heat, holes the size of prize watermelons gaping through.
The armored figure stomped from a side archway, glossy red suit older than Brick’s entire life span (times three) yet now sporting new fiber-optic ridges along the biceps and a glinting sensor cluster where the right ear would be if the helmet had ears. Money bags bulged under hydraulic pincers; the servos whined off-pitch, clearly designed for force projection and less for actual lifting. Vault was one-track minded like that.
“Look at that shiny new stuff,” Boomer sing-songed, bouncing higher. “You’ve been shopping at Villain-Mart. Oooh, do the shoulder things light up? Please tell me they light up.”
The villain’s speaker popped, voice distorted through old electronics. “Not you brats again.”
Brick kept his hands behind back, eyes focused forward as his red-eyed gaze promised Vault no mercy. “Third time this quarter. You know the conversation.”
The helmet’s black visor tracked each of them. “Conversation’s the best part, Red. I steal, you lecture, I fight, you gloat. Tradition.”
Boomer raised a finger like he was asking a teacher. “We’re thinking of switching things up. Maybe we gloat first? You skip the part where the cops pick you out of broken robot parts?”
Butch snorted, shoulders rolling like a boxer. “Fast version sounds nice.”
Vault’s forearm panels unfolded, twin cannons glinting in the early-afternoon light; micro-missile racks hissed open across shoulders. “I invested heavily in new toys. Try not to break them too quickly; the warranty is all paperwork.”
Red dots hopped over Brick’s torso; targeting lasers obviously. He inhaled as his thoughts ran rapid-fire. Civilian evacuation incomplete. Police perimeter at minimum safe distance. News chopper still in blast radius. Missile count twelve, energy capacitors full, output unchanged. He flicked three fingers down as signal; Butch shot vertical, Boomer skimmed street-level; Brick took two steps forward because forward gave him numbers he could control.
The micro-missiles shrieked free, loud and angry like huge mosquitos or same-size, contrails drawing white lines through dirty air. Brick slipped left, heat brushing coat seams as the first volley screamed past.
One missile targeted pedestrians and Brick knew that would be an easy six casualties. Not on my watch.
The Red leader zipped mid-street, snagged the missile by the fin, and redirected the thing at a ninety-degree angle as he let it spin him like a top. And release! He let the missile go, the thing slamming into what was once an empty tour bus.
Was.
“Brick, you’re on fire!” Boomer sounded out.
Flame licked the edge of his costume, threatening his hair as if it could. He patted it out without losing stride. “Contained.”
Butch roared overhead, heat vision carving twin rails through three more missiles. Explosions scattered across a deserted crosswalk, hot shrapnel pinging cruiser windshields. Officers ducked behind car doors and anything else in the way, fear on their faces they were trying to hide.
Boomer blurred in; electricity crackled along his arms in bright blue Boomer-colored arcs. He bounced between laser pulses, afterimages clearly confusing Vault’s auto-tracking until the dots painted loops across empty air. “Laser tag with bots is more fun than the mall version,” Boomer shouted out, voice warped as he barely stayed in one place for a half-instant.
Vault spat stream-cutter beams, gouging asphalt trenches to the point they were filled with melted tar. Pedestrian barricades toppled like bowling pins, a stray missile striking the side of a police cruiser and flipping it a third of a block away.
He launched himself vertical, scanning armor again. Left scapular coupling, still exposed. As smart as Vault was, he always made at least one mistake like this.
He almost smirked.
Boomer zipped to undercarriage altitude, arms windmilling as he skidded to a stop inches from Vault’s visor with a wide, Boomer-classic grin on his face. ta conduits. Sparks danced but the new grounding mesh glowed blue, “Peek-a-boo!” Then he dumped controlled current into neck-joint plating, each arc aiming for data conduits with surgical precision. Sparks danced like angry fireflies, but the wires and cabling tucked into Vault’s suit glowed blue, the charge siphoned away from anything vital.
Vault’s laugh rattled windows half a block away. “Shielded for that trick, lightning-boy.”
“Aw, come on!” Boomer zipped backwards in the air, arms folded over his chest as he pouted like a toddler mid-fight. “That was my best move! That’s not fair!”
Flame jets burst around Vault’s scarlet ankles, a swirling double cone of fire a good six meters wide by Brick’s estimate. Heat slapped buildings, glass turning cloudy as the Trinity leader tasted burnt polymer.
Butch ignored the heat map entirely and dove bodily through the fire ring, shoulders punching through flame like it was warm air. In an instant, he hammered the chest plate with both fists, impact ringing like a bell made of thunder.
Metal dented as the suit rocked, Vault staggering back from the force of the hits even as the green Rowdyruff did his best not to kill the aging man inside.
“That’s the stuff,” Butch growled, already darting back to make way for Brick.
My turn. Brick inhaled deep, pulling in as much air as possible until his ribs began to strain against his chest. Pressure built behind teeth, crawling up his airway and forming frost on his tongue and lips.
He exhaled.
The freeze breath came out as sleet and mist, snapping the fire barrier into brittle glassy sculptures. Frost spread up Vault’s leg servos, locking pistons in ice the color of spilled liquid nitrogen.
The villain staggered, servos whining as frozen joints refused to respond. “S-since when can y-you freeeeeeeze?” His voice shuddered, audio box going static as his gear began to fail system by system.
“Three months and a ton of practice,” Brick said without humor. The new power still felt strange, even when he had the idea of trying to figure it out after remembering how Blossom had managed to pull off fire breath once. If she can do it, I can do it. He shot forward, palm igniting with micro-plasma and wrapping around his fist like raw sunlight, an extension of his fire breath that had taken him almost half as long to get down as the ice breath..
“He’s doing the Ace thing!” Boomer’s voice cracked with excitement.
Brick smirked as he shot forward, flame-wrapped fist aimed at that familiar weak point. Heat met recently frozen alloy, thermal shock fracturing the coupling like sugar glass. The snap sound rang loud over everything else—metal surrendering to physics, predictable as math.
Suit alarms howled like a dying pack of wolves. Vault lurched, one leg refusing to articulate as he tried to stay upright. Money bags fell to the sidewalk, sending hundreds flying into the sky under police lights like expensive confetti..
Boomer crowed like a blond Peter Pan in black meta-material, mid-loop above them. “Honestly, you should ask for store credit next time.”
Vault tried to swivel cannons but Butch bear-hugged the right arm, wrenched, and tore the cannon free, wires sparking like jellyfish nerves. He flung the busted part into a yellow cab roof. The cabbie inside yelped, radio coming to life with distorted-sounding salsa music. Brick flagged it for insurance. GDA’ll mail a check.
Vault froze, servos stuck in failsafe as emergency power began to cycle down. The street fell quiet, with the exception of police sirens and helicopters in the sky. Inside the helmet, the villain sighed, speaker barely transmitting. “Dinner reservation’s shot now.”
“Should’ve thought of that before you robbed a bank,” Butch shot his way.
Rotor wash hit from overhead, news choppers hovering like the annoying flies they were as the GDA VTOL dropped down. Cameras rushed forward behind news reporters on the ground. The crowd beyond barricades had grown, cell phones up like he wouldn’t heat vision them to plastic blobs if he felt like it.
Then air compressed behind them, a soft sonic shove of air announcing five arrivals. Their costumes bright against dingy snow-grey asphalt, Brick recognized them before the dust settled, hours of poring over GDA files paying off.
The Actioneers.
Local PR darlings in the heart of New York, way more loved than Capes Inc, mostly because they were still new, fresh, and, most importantly, young.
Sergeant Superior in front, the former soldier stood firmly in a hero posture tuned for cameras: black-white bodysuit, and a tight grin as he floated in the air. Code Blue stood like a fighter in his fully-covering blue and black spandex as he held his escrima sticks out. Kinetic’s fists popped light like defective lightbulbs, the Black woman with tight braids hovering not too far below Superior as she dropped the rest of the team floating with her powers. Minotaur, a Black man the size of a sedan, hefted an axe the size of said sedan’s door and Mecha-Maid, the pink-and-white robot of the team, scanned the space with synthetic eyes.
The Sergeant announced himself, chest out. “Citizens of New York, fear not, the Actioneers have—” He scanned the inert suit of armor being cuffed by the GDA troopers and blinked— “—arrived.”
Brick didn’t move, eyeing them silently.
Superior tried again. “Seems under control. I am Sergeant Superior, leader of—”
Butch, always as blunt and obvious as a thrown car, interrupted the guy just the way Brick expected of him. “Never heard of you.”
Superior’s smile flickered, clearly out of his depth right now. “The… the Actioneers. We handled Crimson Tide, the Red Roach Uprising—”
Boomer leaned toward Brick, whispering loud enough for the news cameras to pick up. “Was that local? Maybe cable? I miss a lot of channels.”
Code Blue stepped forward, Brooklyn rasp heavy with barely-contained irritation. “Appreciate the assist, kiddos, but this is our jurisdiction. We tracked Vault, and we already had a coordinated play ready. “ The hero in blue spandex gestured around, particularly at the cab with a cannon fused to the roof. “Now we have a crater.”
“Four craters,” Brick corrected automatically as he angled his head, always finding it funny how people barely above normal human liked to shit-talk him. “Your plan involved late arrival?”
Kinetic’s energy flared, yellow light flickering around her. “Listen, just… just listen. How old are you, kid? Twelve? I’ve seen you on the news. Who signs your permission slips?”
Question unnecessary. Brick kept his expression passive. “We’re the new replacement for the Guardians of the Globe.”
Superior’s patience cracked, the man’s media training clearly slipping as he floated forward imperiously. “Whoever’s sponsoring you, they should now that leaving minors with no oversight is reckless and—”
Minotaur rumbled, voice surprisingly soft for someone built like a walking tank. “Sarge, maybe let it go. Kids did fine.”
Superior ignored him, jabbing a finger toward Brick. “Protocol matters. Chain of command matters. This cowboy bullshit—”
“Protocol.” Brick tasted the word as he rolled it around in his mouth. “Thirty-one hostages saved. Response time 15 seconds versus your five minutes. Results speak for themselves.”
Mecha-Maid’s voice slipped smooth and unbothered, synthetic audio modulator doing its work perfectly. “Data review suggests optimal outcome already achieved. Additional engagement redundant.”
“I am not a robot,” Mecha-Maid replied with mechanical precision. “I am an advanced artificial intelligence housed in a combat-optimized synthetic frame.”
“That’s a robot,” Boomer said helpfully. “Like, super robot. Mega robot. Robot robot.”
Butch floated backward, clearly already bored with this. “Bank’s safe, no body bags. We’re done here.”
Superior reached out, desperation bleeding through his attempt to take control of everything as he lowered himself down toward the boys “Well, in that case, how about we exchange some intel, do joint debrief—”
Brick spoke, dry as chalk and half as brittle. “Actioneers. Roster publicly held. Sergeant Superior, powers flight, strength, ocular heat beam. Average response time three minutes faster than national meta mean.”
Superior stopped. “You— you researched us.”
“I read all the files on you,” Brick said. Knowledge was a weapon and he liked to think of it more like a railgun.
Boomer bobbed near him, wide grin splitting his face. “He really does. Probably knows your shoe size. And your birthday. And your mom’s birthday.”
“Size eleven, March fifteenth, August 27th,” Brick answered to prove that wasn’t a bluff, thumbing his nose.
Superior’s face went pale below his mask, lower jaw looking the shade of milk. “How did you—”
“I read all the files.”
Superior exhaled through teeth as both the tension and his anger sagged, the GDA finished loading Vault into the VTOL as they spoke.
That’s us done. Brick lifted, motion smooth. “Transport en route. Scene secure.” He rose above streetlights.
Boomer waved at the confused Actioneers, cheerful as a puppy. “We should do pizza sometime. Or tacos. I like tacos. Do you guys like tacos?”
No one responded.
Butch shot up quickly, scoffing at the heroes Boomer was trying to be nice too. “Leave the losers and let’s grab lunch.”
Boomer waved nervously, eye twitching at Butch’s words. The blue Rowdyruff mouthed a ‘sorry’, Brick rolling his eyes at the action, but quickly shot up to follow his green brother. Behind them, Brick finally shot up properly as well, catching up to the other two in barely a blink of an eye, red light trail behind him.
“Thanks for trying to make connections, Boomer.” The words left his mouth purposely, even if he didn’t really feel them.
“I did good?”
“…You did good.”
Boomer’s sigh carried relief. “Cool. Burritos on the way home?”
Butch barked from ahead, “Spicy ones this time.”
Brick’s stomach rolled. “Spice is fine.”